It's a Gigondas!

By Rob Bralow

Remember that photo I showed you last week about the good packaging that came from Cotes-du-Rhone? It doesn't matter, I am going to show it to you again anyway.


Isn't that lovely? Simple and elegant. It actually inspired me to do a similar wrap on all of my bottle gifts that I gave for the holidays in artfully taped paper. Mine looked nothing like the photo above, I actually have no artistic talent, only taste (good or bad, it's still taste!).

I was very pleased to find that one of those bottles was the 2005 Pierre Amadieu Gigondas Romane Machotte . That's a lot of names for one wine, but what you need to really know is that the wine is from Gigondas, made by Pierre Amadieu. Got it?

Gigondas is a Southern AOC in the Rhone Valley in France. This AOC produces only red wines, with very little Rose as well. This particular wine is made from Grenache and Syrah and I could drink it all day.

The nose had a nice perfume with a mix of figs and dried cherries. In my mouth the wine was rich and vibrant, pushing red cherry, fig and some pepper through a steady structure and ending with a little anise. Really yummy, I would pick one up pronto. For $25, I think this is properly valued.

Nice Package

By Rob Bralow

In November I wrote about how The Whole Package is Important, and I thought I would follow that up with some really great packages to show you how its done.

And you thought I was going to take you to see some other packages didn't you... sometimes knowing my mother is reading this is just enough a deterrent. Sometimes...

But, back to some spiffy packaging. Some are simple like this one from the people running the program for Cotes-du-Rhones:


You have probably seen their ads in the major wine trade publications, the ones comparing a fabulous meal with a pizza or a hamburger (which I might add is definitely one of the important food groups). The message is that wines from Cotes-du-Rhone are for every occasion. I think Fred Fanzia might have that market covered, but I think wine all the time is not a bad thing.

Then I received this from Grand Marnier:


Their new marketing campaign is La Vie Grand Marnier, very red and flashy and all about women. Seriously, if they were thinking of targeting men in this ad campaign they missed, but I think that all of the Chic clothing hits women in the jealous spot. I think. Honestly, I'm a man and know so little about these things that one would have to sit down and explain it to me very slowly... They did go to the trouble of creating a video, although I find it a little strange that there is no website attached to the campaign and no mention of it on the Grand Marnier homepage. And the contest that is on the homepage has expired...

And then there was Tempra Tantrum





I felt like someone had decided what the flashiest almost clashing colors on the color wheel were and threw them at this box. This is marketing at its finest. Fredric Koeppel at Bigger Than Your Head also received this gawdy package and had some great commentary. For me, a person who thinks about marketing and public relations for clients, I think this is beautiful. I mean, it has all of the information that an uninformed, novice in the wine world could possibly want to know about the wines in the box. And it even comes with Toñito, not the Spanish football player but instead a somewhat bullhorn shaped webcam. I won't talk about the wines (that's tomorrow's post), but I will say that from a marketing perspective this is a nice package.

The Whole Package is Important

Let's say that you are a not-unknown blogger, who on a regular occasion received packages from wineries, distilleries, and a few other 'ies.' Let us further suppose that on a regular basis it is the items within the package are someones products that they would like for you to review. Many come in ugly packages, brown boxes, Styrofoam cases, and all other manner of ways that probably harm the environment. You are used to them all, but notice each one and it gives an immediate sense of how the sender thought about their products.

So, what do you think the person that sent me this box thinks about their product:


Today I received that in the mail. It is a used paper ream box, stuffed with brown paper, with each of the bottles of wine (yes, multiple) were surrounded by one sheet of bubble wrap and a rubber band. There was a perfectly neat and pretty press kit sitting on top of this mess.

People, the whole package matters. PR/Marketing to wine writers is all about judgments and the careful balance of impressions. This kind of packaging does NOT make a good impression. It immediately makes me think that the wines inside are "cheap," "unloved," "uncared for," "probably not worth my time to open and taste."

Sure, I understand, I am only a blogger. I do not write for a syndicated publication. No other blogger talks about me, I have never been highlighted by anyone else as being worth listening to. In fact, I am not sure why you are sending wines to me in the first place. However, you have no idea who reads my blog (besides my mother that is, you've probably figured out by now that she reads my blog and probably buys a good deal of wine). It is both the biggest problem and the greatest advantage to the Internet. You never know where the next news story will come from and if it is YOUR product that is going to ride the wave.

Give your product every opportunity. There are plenty of other people that are making their products look really good. There is no need to make your wine look worse.

For the record, I will taste these wines, far from this discarded box. I will taste them among other wines and judge them for what they are worth, rather than how the sending felt about them.